Sialin

Sialin, women’s shawl, from the village of Koilani. It is made of dimiton, a silk fabric woven with four heddles, and decorated with the tie-dye technique.   The basic colours are white, yellow, green, red and burgundy. The linear designs create a complex mosaic with lozenges, crosses, rosettes, straight, zigzag and curved lines, all of which are formed with dots, a result of the tie-dye technique. A large cross with an outline of white dots divides the shawl into four square parts, each of which has a central lozenge design. At the centre of the shawl, there is a lozenge containing nine small squares with three white dots at their centre. The bottom left and top right squares have the same lozenge variation, with seven oblique parallel lines of yellow dots on a green background. The top left square contains a cross with pairs of small flowers between its arms, while the bottom right square has a flower with four petals in its centre. The background of the shawl is covered with smaller lozenges and other linear and curvilinear designs. Two sides of the shawl are finished in selvage while the other two end in tassels of warp threads, in the burgundy colour of the background.   It is preserved in very good condition and is similar to the two Koilani shawls in the Cypriot ethnographic collection in the Benaki Museum (Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou 2010, 107, no. 74 and 108, no. 75).   Dimensions: length 105 cm., width 110 cm.   Donation by L. Drandakis, 2017. Purchased from the antiquarian shop "Homeros," Soutsou Street, Athens.